The Glue
by Clouded Revelation
Summary: "You smile grimly as you think about how hard you tried to be The Glue, the one that held the gang together. Once it was obvious that Sodapop, the Super Glue, wasn't up to the task, you knew you had to do it." An epilogue to The Outsiders! A bit angsty.


**My first one-shot, and my first attempt at anything the teeniest bit angsty. Enjoy!**

You sit on the side of the road, the icy wind biting deep into your bare arms, watching the cars you used to love so much fly by. You remember how your face used to light up thinking of cars, the way the motors fit so perfectly and precisely together, all the parts working in harmony to propel each other forward. It was the best feeling in the world, knowing that something you did went right, that you could make all the pieces fit together perfectly; you, the dumb hood who was known for nothing more than being unfeeling and having swirly hair.

Well, right now you were sure as heck sure you could feel. Maybe you can feel everything a little too sharp.

You smile grimly as you think about how hard you tried to be The Glue, the one that held the gang together. Once it was obvious that Sodapop, the Super Glue, wasn't up to the task, you knew you had to do it. Even though you were only the cheap glue you could buy for a few cents at any decent store. But Dally and Johnny's death just tore the gang to pieces, and all of a sudden those pieces didn't fit together anymore. And no matter how many tears you shed, how much effort you gave, how many fake smiles you contorted your face into, you couldn't hold together puzzle pieces that didn't fit. You couldn't make the gang stay together.

When you think of Two-Bit Mathews, you no longer can remember the laughing, wisecracking greaser with the switch and the sideburns and the blondes. Your mind is filled with images of how he griped about that stupid switchblade when it was torn from Dally's dead body. I held my tongue instead of mentioning that he cared more about that butter knife than our dead friends, our dead brothers. At first he longed for that last reminder of better days, when he finally unwound trembling fingers from his rusty colored locks and shouted hoarsely, "Why couldn't they just let Dally have it? Dally'd be devastated to know he was buried without a blade. He didn't even have long hair, for Christ sake." Two-Bit's voice had trembled as he stared around the stared around the room with blank, hollow, unseeing gray eyes. "They shouldn't'a cut his hair. He liked it long."

You couldn't find your voice to tell him the lie, the one you'd heard too many times, the one that seemed to flow from everyone's lips. You tried to give him the false hope, the devil's promise, the "It'll be okay" everyone seemed to spew out the moment they saw you. But when you look over at Two-Bit, still mumbling, "His hair…", you realize that Two-Bit isn't the same grinning, joking teenager he was even a week before. Now he was an adult. A broken, dead-eyed adult that was already being infiltrated with a hatred of the world that you pretended wouldn't soon become his whole life. When he fell deep into the bottle, you couldn't say that you hadn't expected it. You knew Two-Bit was a failure. Your own personal failure. You're The Glue. It's your job.

You stand up when you see a real Socy car pass by. After Johnny and Bob died, they no longer screamed "Greaser!" and jumped us. Hell, you aren't even called greasers anymore. You suppose they aren't even Socs. You feel a sudden rush of anger flow through you at this thought. They will always be Socs. They will always be the evil ones, the enemies, the murderers of Johnny and Dally just as sure as if they'd killed them with their bare hands. Before you know it your feet are moving, beating the ground as anger pulsates through your chest like it's replaced your blood. Some sane part of your mind tries to say, _You can't catch them,_ but you don't care. And then the anger bubbles up through your throat and erupts. But when the words finally fall off of your tongue your strength has evaporated, and it comes out as barely a whisper. "Murderers! Socs! Dirty fuckin' bastards." Then your voice cracks, and the car just keeps speeding on by without hesitation, and pull a cancer stick from your pocket and light up.

You inhale deeply, the smoke from the cigarette filling your lungs. The sting keeps you rooted to Earth, holds you together. You're not sure that you wouldn't just sink down through the ground to rot in hell if that burn inside you wasn't there. You'd just be a nothing. A big, empty cut-out where Steve Randle used to stand. You hated that that sting had to keep you from evaporating, but you needed to be held together, so you could try to hold everyone else together. You were The Glue, and you needed to be glued together by something, too.

Then you think of the next thing you failed to save. At first you thought he was going to be your rock, your savior. But when you tried to cling to him, he melted into quicksand, and you almost sunk in with him. But you sucked in that cigarette smoke and it kept you rooted. He doesn't seem as shaken by Dally and Johnny's death as he is by the effects of it. He seemed to be able to come through the fire unscathed at first, but after a while it became obvious that his insides had melted. The social workers had come in waves, and then the reporters, and the police, and Darry held firm. But finally they left, left him alone with his broken brothers and his jobs, and he had drowned in what little he had left. You wouldn't say that he had been pushed underwater, more that he had jumped in to hide from all the horrors above the surface. You could barely stomach watching him suck in more and more water, trying desperately to get his oxygen from that instead of the air that was right on the surface. After a while you turned away from him in disgust, letting him suffocate himself in extra shifts and raises.

You kick a rock as hard as you can, and then go to inspect the ding in a car you just created. You trace it with your finger, the cool metal feeling like silk against your hand. Your breath fogs up the cool glass of the windows, more evidence that you are still alive and not in some hellish dream like you'd been hoping for weeks. But long ago you'd dropped the charade. You were really The Glue. The Glue that was failing, that was watching his friends die on the inside, and was giving up. Saving himself, rather than risk his own sanity watching his brothers be killed. As you continue your inspection of the car, you think of who you used to share cars with, who you used to share everything with. Sodapop Curtis.

He was the one thing you came close to keeping the same, to preserving perfectly. At first his irreversible optimism was his lifeline, the one thing that kept him sane and healthy. Alive. But then you realized that his happiness wasn't him, it was the mask he hides behind. The façade that he uses to protect himself. He was one of the ones that always give that slippery lie, the lie that twists tongues and stems the flow of tears, "It will all be okay." Screw okay. You weren't okay, Darry wasn't okay, Johnny and Dally sure as heck ain't okay. All that heaven shit was just that – shit. You were the only one not dumb enough to fall for it. And when Soda finally snapped, when he finally banged a car's hood shut like a closed eye and turned to face you, you knew he was gone. Dead. When he shouted, "I hate cars!" and stormed out of the DX, never to return again, you knew it. And you hated it. There's another check mark, strike three: The Glue failed again. You were The Glue, the Stupid Fucking Glue that couldn't hold anything together.

When you finally slam open the Curtis's door, you start to turn back when no one but the kid is there. You can't wait to slam the door closed again, to feel that door quivering underneath your fingertips and know it's in submission to you, admitting to your power over it. Admitting that you were the master of that door, that it couldn't help but obey you like no other thing on this world would.

And then Ponyboy turns his lazy green-gray on you, and you nod your head coldly in greeting. You are unfeeling, after all, and unfeeling people don't embrace the first human contact they've had in days.

"You can stay, Steve," he says quietly, and your feet drag your unwilling body to sit on the couch beside him. Your nails slice into the soft flesh of your hands, making perfect little red crescents. You have the urge to taste the beautiful red liquid dripping from your palm, and you do, your tongue dancing when the sweet liquid touches it. The fluid is like honey or alcohol to your crazed lips, and you close your eyes as the taste washes over your tongue, leaving in its wake calm and craving.

"Soda coming home soon?" you say after a silence that was squeezing your head until you were sure it would burst into beautiful red droplets that you couldn't even let drip into your eagerly waiting mouth afterwards.

"No. He's gone all night. Buck's." The hurt in Ponyboy's voice shows through a tiny tremble, his eyes unfocused on the television set, though he pretended to be.

"Oh." You let a frown crinkle your forehead. You didn't know Soda hung out at Buck's. He was going to get into trouble there.

"Do… Do you think it's gonna get better soon, Steve?" Ponyboy turns hopeful eyes towards you, and you remember just how much you hate the kid.

"I don't know. Maybe it's never gonna get better." You have to keep being the solid one, the one that was hard as rock and as uncaring as they come. You can't let yourself explode into a being of tears and cries and pain like you want to. You can't let yourself grab the sharpest knife in the kitchen and taste more of that sweet-as-honey blood, the red liquid that seeps into your brain more than alcohol.

"It will, though." Ponyboy's voice was determined. He tears his eyes from the television screen to face yours. You recoil a little in shock. Then you wonder how Ponyboy suddenly became so real. He's returned from the dead, you realize. He's come back from the half-world, the world where everything you see everything in third person. And you smile a little, and you ruffle the surprised kid's hair.

"Ow," he says in surprise, though you haven't really hurt him. And suddenly his greenish-gray eyes aren't so distant anymore. They're right with you, looking at you, not through you.

You can't help but remember the month or two that Ponyboy spent in his mysterious half-life. You understand that Ponyboy's pain is partially what killed Darry and Soda, and for a while you hated him even more for that. You thought of Ponyboy as A Murderer, almost as much as you though of the Socs as Murderers. Murderers with a capital M. It might as well be their name, for all you care. Ponyboy had started getting bad grades, failing courses and forcing Darry to wake up long enough to yell at Ponyboy until Pony killed himself inside again. But as much as you hated Ponyboy, you couldn't help but think of him as angel with broken wings and a crooked halo. When you were a little kid, you used to think about those pictures of angels in Bible class. Not all angels could possibly be pretty. Some must be ugly, deformed and gross looking as they were in life. Death didn't give you a model body, you didn't think. But in all the pictures, angels were beautiful, looking like perfect beings of light and all that shit. Where were the ugly angels? You always knew if you were an angel you'd be an ugly one, not beautiful enough to make it in the pictures. And then when you'd looked at Ponyboy, you couldn't help but think that he was one of those broken angels. One of the angels that spent their nights crying, and their days trying to arrange their halos that just weren't as straight as all the others'. Ponyboy, your broken angel, crying tears that tasted of light and stars. And then that angel's wings had suddenly fallen off, and he'd tumbled to the ground, crawling along the ground, dreaming of the lie, the "It'll be okay" that he was too smart to believe.

But now thw angel's wings had suddenly burst into being, and he was slowly drifting back up, back up into the world of angels. And you couldn't help but burst out, "Take me with you!"

And instead of being confused, Ponyboy looks at you and nods slightly. And you realize that maybe you were doing an okay job of being The Glue. You got one back. Maybe you can get them all. And then the broken angel smiles his crooked smile and looks right at you, not through you, and you are The Glue.


End file.
